How to Wipe Hard Drive on HP Laptop Completely?

How do I completely wipe my HP hard drive?

Case 1: "I am sending a defective HP laptop back to them for replacement...I do not have a recovery disc...Is there a way to wipe it clean without a disc?"

Case 2: "Hello, I have a HP laptop, with a 'Requested Resource is in use' source virus, and this virus disables all anti virus's, and impossible to reset system. Is it possible to wipe it clean? But I don't know how to wipe hard drive HP laptop."

Case 3: "I just bought an HP laptop that I want to wipe completely clean and then reinstall Windows 10. Which method would be great for laptops for what I described above? Thank you very much for all your help."

Why need to wipe hard drive on HP laptop?

From the user cases above, people usually choose to clean up HP laptop hard drive for different reasons. The most common and possible factors may include:

✦ To protect confidential information. Sometimes, you may need to make your data irrecoverable to keep it safe. Clearing hard drive is one of the most workable ways to realize it.

✦ To reuse the hard drive. When the hard drive is filled with useless or unimportant files, you may want to delete it completely. Or when you upgrade HDD to SSD, you could wipe the previous HDD as a data drive.

✦ To sell or throw away the computer. What you most concerned is the safety of your data if you tend to sell your computer. Thus, wiping disk completely will prevent your information from being restored by bad buyers.

✦ To erase some unknown errors. If you find there is something wrong with your disk and don’t know how to handle it, you can try permanently wiping hard drive.

How to wipe hard drive on HP laptop?

As we can see, there are many reasons leading you to perform a permanent hard drive wiping. But the majority of users may don't know where to start. Luckily, this post will demonstrate to you two reliable ways to teach you how to wipe hard drive clean on HP laptop: one is the HP official tool and the other is a third-party disk wiper.

Note: Since both two methods will make the data irrecoverable, please back up the important files in advance.

▶ Method 1. Use HP Disk Sanitizer or Secure Erase

For the differences between SSD and HDD, HP PC provides Disk Sanitizer tool to wipe all data on the hard disk drives and Secure Erase for both solid-state drives and hard drives. However, which tool to be used on how to wipe HP laptop depends on not only whether you are HDD or SSD, but also the age of your HP computer.

Step 1. Power on your HP computer. Press "F10" repeatedly as soon as the HP logo appears on the screen.

Step 2. And you will enter BIOS setup. Then select the "Security" tab.

Step 3. Choose "Hard Drive Utilities" or "Hard Drive Tools".

Step 4. Choose "Secure Erase" to launch HP Secure Erase.

Step 5. Choose the drive from the listed storage devices.

Step 6. And this program will warn you that this operation will erase all data on the hard drive, confirm the operation and click "Continue".

★Notes:

HP added Secure Erase to the standard BIOS in 2011, so, if you bought your HP laptop in 2009 or later, you might need to use the tool by upgrading the BIOS.

Although HP tools allow you to wipe an HDD or SSD, it's not suggested to employ them because the wiping process will decrease the lifespan and performance of your hard drive.

▶ Method 2. Use a professional disk wiper

Actually, a number of users said that they failed to wipe a hard drive via HP Disk Sanitizer or Secure Erase. For example, the locked drive may stop their success in cleaning up a disk. Besides, it's complicated for old PC users to use these two tools. And most importantly, they don't want to damage their performance of hard drives. Thus, resorting to an professional and powerful tool to wipe HP laptop securely is a smart move.

Among all the tools on the market, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional stands out for its remarkable merits in wiping hard drive:

♥ For wiping features, AOMEI software provides "Wipe Hard Drive" for HDD and "SSD Secure Erase" for SSD respectively. Moreover, it supports only "Wiping Partition", allowing you to erase a single partition thoroughly without deleting Windows OS.
♥ For wiping methods, there are four erasing options to completely remove everything on your HP laptop. You could select one according to your needs: Fill sectors with Zero, Fill sectors with random data, DoD 5220.22-M and Gutmann.

Here is the Demo version, you can download it first and see how to wipe hard drive HP laptop.

Note: If you cannot boot up your PC, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional to make a bootable media in advance.

✎ Wipe an HDD

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. In the main interface, right-click the hard drive that needs to be wiped, select "Wipe Hard Drive" in the pop-up menu.

Step 2. In the next window, you could choose the wiping method. Here we choose "Fill sectors with Zero", which is safe and quick. This operation will delete all partitions and erase all data on the selected hard drive. Click "OK" to continue.

Step 3.  Click "Apply" to start wiping.

✎ Wipe an SSD

✍ Note: Due to the system compatibility, this method currently works on Windows 7 computer, so please prepare a Win 7 computer and connect your SSD with it, and then commit the following operations on it.

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant. Click "Wipe" on the top menu and choose "SSD Secure Erase".

Step 2. Choose the disk you are going to erase from the list and click "Next".

Step 3. In the pop-up window, check the SSD identification information again in case that you erase a wrong disk. You'll find the SSD is under a frozen state which is set to ensure no one can modify your drive settings. Perform a hot swap to disable this restriction.

Tip: How to perform a hot swap?

First, open computer case, rear cover or drive shell and find out the SSD you’ll erase.

Second, unplug the power cable and then disconnect the SATA data cable from SSD.

Finally, after a few seconds, reconnect the SATA cable to the SATA port and then plug the power cable back to complete the hot-swap.

Step 4. Now, click "Next" to start wiping all data on SSD securely. Wait for a while, the erasing process will finish.

Conclusion

How to wipe hard drive HP laptop? After reading this article, you have learned two ways to make it. Using HP tools is an effective way to completely wipe a hard drive. And you can also use AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional in the circumstance where the HP wiping method is unavailable, especially when considering the health of hard drive.

And this software also has other popular functions to manage partitions, such as mirroring C drive, transferring OS to SSD without reinstalling, converting MBR to GPT for Windows 11 upgrade without losing data. 

In addition, if you are using Windows Server systems, please try AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.